Legends of Tomorrow to Feature Older, One-Armed Green Arrow

With the second episode of Legends of Tomorrow set to air tonight, the latest DC Comics-based spinoff from The CW has already established itself as a cheesy but potentially very entertaining adventure through time featuring a team of outcasts, criminals and underdogs. The ensemble cast is made up of a collection of former regulars and occasional guest stars from Arrow and The Flash, including The Atom (Brandon Routh), White Canary (Caity Lotz), Captain Cold (Wentworth Miller), Heat Wave (Dominic Purcell), the two halves of Firestorm (Victor Garber and Franz Drameh), Hawk Man (Falk Hentschel) and Hawk Girl (Ciara Renée).

Both Arrow and The Flash spent a significant amount of time laying the groundwork for Legends of Tomorrow, and both Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell) and Laurel Lance (Katie Cassidy) made an appearance in the show’s pilot in order to send off Ray Palmer and Sara Lance. The CW’s DC mastermind Greg Berlanti has said in the past that The Waverider’s crew will meet up with past and/or future versions of the Flash and the Green Arrow in their travels, and now executive producer Marc Guggenheim has offered some more details as to when exactly we’ll see Oliver again.

Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, Guggenheim confirmed that Oliver’s son (in the comics), Connor Hawke, will make an appearance in an upcoming episode. Not only that, but we will also get to see Amell sporting a goatee as a much older version of Oliver Queen… and we may even get to see him firing a bow with one arm.

“Every once and a while, we do an episode where the 10-year-old me has to pinch himself. We’re not only introducing our version of Connor Hawke to our universe, we’re going to meet the 2046 version of Oliver Queen, and Stephen Amell is going to be reprising his role from Arrow. As an added bonus to comic-book fans, Oliver is missing his left arm and will be sporting a goatee, in a nod to the character’s appearance in the seminal Dark Knight Returns. We think this episode features some of the coolest things we’ve ever done.”

Green Arrow in The Dark Knight Returns

Old Man Oliver and his son Connor will both make their appearance in the sixth episode of Legends of Tomorrow, “Star City 2146.” The discrepancy between the episode title and the year that the team meets up with Oliver again suggests that multiple time periods will be visited in the space of the episode. Perhaps the Legends need to do something in 2046 in order to prevent something terrible happening in Star City 100 years down the line?

Regardless, it should be gratifying for fans of the comic books to see a live-action version of the Green Arrow as he appears in The Dark Knight Returns – and for everyone else to finally see Amell sporting a goatee for the role. Perhaps he’ll like it so much that he’ll agree to grow his beard out for Arrow as well.

Legends of Tomorrowairs Thursday nights at 8pm, following The Flash on Tuesdays and Arrow on Wednesdays in the same timeslot.